Legacy sound drops out???

Hi Sam Todd is right put a battery in and also

clean all the wheels and pick up rollers

Thanks, Alex

I'll check in the morning for a battery.

Somehow I thought Legacy eliminated the 9v battery???

TMCC or Legacy does not need the battery in most cases.  There are some times when trans versing some switches and other track sections where the tender pu rollers loose contact depending on spacing. 

I have found That on Legacy steam engines, if the tender looses power over a switch, unlike on pre Legacy engines, the sounds will not come back on.  With a Legacy controller, there is a button (in the 0 position) that resets everything about the engine or lash-up to its start up condition (forward direction and sounds restored. 

Because of the spacing on many of my Atlas switches, I have had to run a wire from a pickup on the tender to a pickup on the engine.  Some say a battery in the tender will solve the issue but on several engines, the use of the battery does not cut off when the engine is shutdown so the battery runs down in a day or so.

These a such great running and sounding engines, I do believe they are worth the extra effort.  Now that you have your first Legacy engine, you will be amazed at the new worlds of sound and operation available to you with the Legacy control system.

Happy railroading,

Don

I have hit 2 of the same situations this year.  On both, when the sounds dropped out I would stop the engine and hit AUX 1-0 and they would come alive.  It turned out to be a roller situation on both.  One roller would stick and not have full pressure on the center rail. When this occourred, all the other roller needed to do was loose contact (switch-dirty track) for a second and sounds would drop out.   As soon as I stopped the loco it would reboot like I stated.   A pinch on the roller legs freed it up and life was good. 

What Don did is a good idea if you have that switch situation.

My vl challenger did this a few times .. I had dirty track

Don't need to hit AUX anything just blow the whistle . When you do it's addressing that engine and sound will come back on . I do it all the time.

You better hurry up and get that 990 legacy controller Sam . You just won't believe how much fun it is to have both.

David

Agreed...

My Blue Comet and Great Northern mikado both lose sound sometimes when passing thru Real Trax switches.Battery in Tender solved problem

I had the same issue, turned out to be dirty pickup rollers as well as dirty switch track. When all of the crud "lined up" it would lose power. Cleaned everything and its never been a problem since, it seems some of the newer legacy loos are more sensative to dirty track than the old tmcc ones.

I have many Lionel TMCC steamers - no Legacy - and there are no batteries in any

of them. Batteries are for conventional operation, if anything.

The problem you describe is almost unheard of with my locos, and occurs on only

2 of them - both old, early RS equipment. One must be shut down to get the sound

working (unacceptable), and the other can be simply given a command (like whistle). All the others, when hitting the rare "dead spot" come right back on as they should when

current flows again.

My 2 cents:

This sound drop-out that persists is a design/manufacturing flaw, and should not be 

overlooked or accepted. If your loco is doing this there is something wrong with it.

A battery - which command does not need - is not a fix, even if it is a band-aid.

I tried it in one of the two locos and it improved nothing.

This dead-sound-issue should not happen; power should restore it forthwith.

Does it always seem to happen on a particular track section? If it does you can try to put a ground wire, from an outside good rail, bypassing the problem track, then connect the ground wire to the next outside rail section of 'good' track. What you would be doing is to keep the signal constant past the problem track. I also have the same problem, a drop off, when I hit 'R' the engine stops and resets the sound, but if you put the ground wire this may help.

This is unheard of with your locos because the latest legacy electronics allows for the locomotive to be "shut off" while still on a powered track, no lights until the locomotive is address and the "startup" icon is pushed. Thus when the tender loses power ( dirty track, bad track,or dirty rollers) it "thinks" it has been turned off,when power returns the loco stays off until it is turned back on via the remote. 99% of power dropout problems are a result of poor track power delivery (i.e. Atlas turnouts are notorious for this) not loco related.

The batteries are also useful to listen to engine-only shutdown sequences without the cheesy cab to dispatch chatter beforehand (especially unrealistic with steam engines) by turning off track power instead of AUX-5.